Letter: Out of its league

If the FEMA responses to hurricanes Sandy and Katrina are lauded as examples of why a well-run, well-funded Federal Emergency Management Agency is needed, one would wonder what performance would be considered to be a failure of a federal agency. The pitiful FEMA response to these two storms would be embarrassing to any organization that was not government.

Also, the failure of the Federal Drug Administration in preventing the recent contaminated steroid injections can be explained by the cumbersome bureaucratic inefficiency this agency is well-noted for.

We have a Department of Energy that produces no energy and a Department of Education that educates no students, after spending hundreds of billions of dollars with no beneficial results.

The problem is not that we face many unmet challenges, but that government bureaucracy has repeatedly proved its inability to meet these challenges. By its nature, government is inherently and notoriously inefficient. Mature governments end up just growing more government. Every agency and department in our government demonstrates that fact.

The objective for this country should be to have an efficient and accountable government. The only way to accomplish this is have our government do only what only government can do, such as to provide for the national defense, and regulating interstate commerce.

These functions are found and required in our Constitution. Other functions are necessary, but they should be limited and accountable.